METU EDS 544

This website is designed to be helpful to create learning environments with computer programming. It has software to buy and for free.Detailed information is available in the chapter of Driscoll. I couldn't find STAR LEGACY and ScienceVision anyway. If you find could you please share the URL link?

This is a website that contains simulations for the lessons physics, chemistry, biology and math. The simulations can either be downloaded or applied online, I think it requires Java. They are very fun and active to use with students I think.

Students work in pairs to research and present findings. This video shows interviews with students engaged in the learning process. Notice the high level of involvement and enthusiasm.

The video displays an activity that students are reinforced to produce in terms of constructivist approach. I know the teacher and his ways of integration of the methods. He is mostly effective in such cases, and does not lose the control in any circumstance. In the video, there seems a compexity among students in terms of noise and crowd. However, it was one of the disadvantages of taking the whole class to video. They should present what they have done so far. One of the best thing in the video is peer evaluation that we frequently use.

Each presentation challenges the audience to think differently about an issue of local, national or global significance. Big FAT Ideas encourage audiences to engage with issues and concepts they haven't explored before, or perhaps see familiar issues from a different point of view.

Constructivist teacher and her behaviors accordingly are presented in the article.

The link to the pool that has been prepared for technology based educational materials for FATİH project. In this pool, teachers and students can send several educational materials that they created or they were using in classroom environment. They aim to extend the content with contributions of people who are actively in education in Turkey. However, it is obvious that the project needs professional e-content materials. Videos, pdf's are ok but multimedia based tools are needed.

Erdem, I wonder if there is any section on the website that include resources/guidelines for teachers. E.g. how to integrate those simulations in the classrooms.

Canan, I hope it will help, thank you, Hocam, there are just materials in the pool. I downloaded 10th grade math teacher guidelines released by Ministry of Education and started to read some sections. I saw that they offer recommendations like "using a dynamic math software, students do...". However, I don't know if they will handle the learning and usage of such software in in-service trainings. I wish I could bring more information about the system but they have not answered my CV and my sample work yet,

Dear friends, I strongly recommend you to watch this film. It is about a school (like hababam sınıfı). You will see different approaches against students. Examples of radical behaviorism and in part constructivism can be found. It will be enjoying to watch and contrast these two approaches. Besides educational aspects, this film is so touching. Please, prepare your handkerchiefs :) Original language: French Subtitle: English Link to watch: http://filenuke.com/ulgl9j1ux08p (click to "free" option)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anh7Enari2U (Eng sub)

Dinçer, I will watch it this week!

This is another film about education. In this Turkish film, a western teacher goes to an eastern (kurdish) village to teach 1,2,3,4,5th grades together. It will surely provoke you to think about education in Turkey as well as daily lives of eastern people.

I have watched this film and I was really influenced, Thank your giving it as an example for us.

I also watched the movie couple times. Very touching and forces us to think about the current situation that teachers face in Eastern part of Turkey. Thanks for sharing.

"Cultural & Convention Centre, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, 13-14 December 2012"

Yazar: CHP Parti Meclis Üyesi, 22. Ve 23. Dönem Milletvekili Prof. Dr. Osman Coşkunoğlu (07.02.2012/ Cumhuriyet)

Derste bahsettiğim fatih projesi ve teknoloji entegrasyonu hakkındaki haber.

the website for the Humanistic school Sudbury Valley School located in USA, you can visit their website and explore what they do here :)

Thanks Canan. Looking forward to read some research on these schools.

I have found a book that is about the Sudbury school experience and its effects. the book is not available online unfortunately, only some pages of it: http://books.google.com.tr/books/about/Legacy_of_Trust.html?id=VYMoow2eSI4C&redir_esc=y

A useful webpage about situated cognition. Kind of a summary. :)) Especially "Sam learns about situated cognition video was very nice.

Some useful explanations and examples for humanistic environment in a school regarding curriculum, methods and facilities

Burcu, thank you for sharing. I must confess that I did not understand the difference between humanism and neo humanism:). They seemed almost the same to me. In the movie, children are running in the environment, observing the world, helping people, establishing love and trust with peers and etc. And their ages are small. I support the idea that small children should be made aware of their uniqueness. However, when they grow up, we will have to show them science, math, history and etc. The bulk of knowledge in the world and in our education might unable school to continue humanism in education. Actually, it means that especially for higher graders, we should use humanism as an element in classrooms, not a whole teaching strategy since as wee from the video, creating humanistic classroom is not feasible at all and may not be affordable for higher number of students. In the video they said that firstly they "choose" students. It means that, it is a private school. For private school, one can create almost % 100 percent humanistic environment. However, in public schools, teachers have to integrate humanistic elements into predetermined educational environments.

I wanted to share a very useful video website we can use in our classrooms. Very simple, colourful and enyoyable videos are found to use with students.

Canan, my students used this in their own classrooms in the US. Great resource. Thanks for sharing.

Canan, thanks for sharing. Recently I have been roaming on EBA (eğitim bilişim ağı) web site for FATİH project, and I realized that we really need such platforms with Turkish language. Also you can have a short look at what they are doing for FATİH project. I will post the link.

A useful website including examples of learning and teaching materials about humanism.

Gamze, thanks for sharing. Especially I liked the "humanist perspectives" part since a teacher might not have difficulty in implementing a pre-planned curriculum, however, s/he might have hardship while creating a humanistic classroom. Because, in education, what is a humanistic element is and what is not is not so clear as traditional views. Remember what Ana said, "It seems some of you think that humanism means freeing yourselves or the educational environment. Humanism means enabling students to set a goal and work together to achieve that goal." Ana tries to say that we should not let learning occurs just by chance. That is not humanism. Humanistic teacher just should allow students what they want to do and teach them considering their way of learning and interests. That's why I found humanist perspectives part really useful. To illustrate, to touch on environmental issues in the classroom, you can read the related part for grasping the idea of how a humanistic teacher should behave while teaching this issue.

An article on Turkish National Eduactional Ideology

thank you for sharing this source

Bilge, thank you for the post. It was an interesting topic. I will consider to have the book. In Turkey, after military coup on September the 12th in 1980, the military government introduced some important changes about religious education. Before military government period, schools had offered Religion Lesson as elective and Moral Knowledge Lesson as compulsory. The military government combined the two lessons and decided to be taught in primary and secondary schools compulsorily. However, as it is mentioned in the article, this decision leaded to an Islamization of our education. In my opinion, religious education is important. However, instead of emphasizing only one religion, students should be made aware of other religions and cultures and be tolerant to all of them. They should be thought that having a different religion is not a dangerous phenomenon. Such thoughts have been more and more important after 11th September attack to World Trade Center in the USA.

Bilge, thank you for the post. That was nice to read. However, I wonder if there were no ideas about how to make classrooms have fun or what is "student centered" instruction. The article says, "Öğretmenler önce birbirleriyle iletişim kurmayı, köşe kapmacadan afiş hazırlamaya kadar pek çok etkinlikle öğrenmenin aşamalarını, çocukların özelliklerini, dersi öğrenci merkezli anlatmayı öğreniyor." I want to say "they remind" not "they learn" since I don't think that the teacher does not know what student centered instruction is, or how to colourize lectures. Let's say I hope.

Positive psychology should immediately take place in education. Without concentratig on anxiety, fear of a subject matter we as teachers should focus on enjoyment, fun related to the learning. A theory says that mind can not engage two of the issues at the same time; positive and negative issues. Negative issues are mostly make you prevent from going further with that subject matter, however positive issues do the opposite.

Sinem, I agree with you, I think that's why game-based learning, problem-based learning, anchored instruction that has elements of problem-based learning has started to gain importance in education. I did not understand the sentence "A theory says that mind can not engage two of the issues at the same time; positive and negative issues." Can you explain it please,